Desire

French candidates to the BAC - in effect, the exams that decide on who will gain
access to higher education - were confronted this Wednesday Juy 16 with the fearful
philosophy exams. To give an idea of the process, below, one of the questions to
those students in the Literature program, and a suggested approach from a philosophy
professor - Brice Casanova - that takes into account the year’s readings.


source: l'express
translation: doxa-louise


Is desire(wanting), by its very nature, without limits?

The question seems to take for granted that, indeed, it is. This presupposition puts it
dependent on a philosophical tradition which then needs to be cited and which sees
the absence of limits as one of the defining characteristics of desire. The problem
facing this presupposition is whether this absence of limits is essential. Because one
could also suspect that it is rather the product of a culture which would promote unlimited
desire for reasons that one could explain and thus make known. If on the contrary, it
is essential, then one needs to explain its nature and why this nature could lead to the
absence of limits.


PART ONE

One could begin in a classical fashion by making a distinction between desire and
will. Certainly we can desire and be responsible for our wants in such a way as desire
and will seem one and the same thing. But we can also refuse and work against our
desires. One can will against one’s desire, and even will again and again what our
desire seeks to the point of mastering it. Within this opposition, desire and will are
distinct and will appears as a limiting power. But in order to oppose this desiring t
ension, our will needs to surpass its limits to finally become unlimited. Thus it would
be will that is unlimited rather than desire. Could then unlimited desire be more
apparent than real?

PART TWO

This dummy character is, without doubt, produced, cultivated and maintained by
the general commoditization within which the modern subject moves quite ‘naturally’.
Of course, this alledged essence which eats at spontaneity is the result of a culture.
And it is in Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations that
one could find what is needed to elaborate the concept from the point of view of its
engineering, its discourse and its objective. Nothing could be less under our control
that our desire through which we are indefinitely caught up in the indefinitely rebooted
cycle of the markerplace. Yet one could well wonder whether this indefinitely repeated
cycle of the markerplace is a proper expression of our unlimited desire.

PART THREE

In effect the fact that desire can be unlimited does not imply it should be indefinitely
recycled though the dummy play of the marketplace. As Plato illustrates though Socrate’s
discourse in The Banquet, it rather means that desire gives to the subject which feels it a
meaning which transcends the limits of his own existence. it is wanting which makes us
immortal and lets us experience immortality in a way proper to beings who will
nonetheless die and know it. This authentic unlimied condition can for this reason
be considered natural, that is in fine essential and metaphysical. it can also be cultivated
in an authentic fashion through a consideration of one’s mortality.

CONCLUSION One can conclude that desire can, in effect, be considered unlimited
by nature if one recognizes as its nature the metaphysical dimension to existence.